


Gripping Life in Bloodstained Fingers

by Silicu (silmil)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Akuma no Mi | Devil Fruit, Angst, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pain, Tragedy, What Have I Done, ope ope no mi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:04:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5031280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silmil/pseuds/Silicu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he stared down in bone-chilling realization, all he could see were his own red-stained fingers and the letters DEATH staring right back up at him in mocking irony.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gripping Life in Bloodstained Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Doflamingo's words are taken from ch. 780, MangaStream's translation.

“Eustass!” Law’s voice seemed to echo all around the quieting battle field as he staggered over the destruction, knees hitting the ground hard by the side of the bigger man. He reached forward, horrified at the sight, fingers hovering over the crater that had been opened in Kid's chest and he felt his heart squeeze painfully.

“ _No_ ,” his voice sounded wrong, somehow mangled and desperate as he took in the damage and the hastily paling skin beneath him, looking even starker in contrast to the red blood spreading on the ground around them with a certain unstoppable promise.

It wasn’t just a bad wound – Law _knew_ bad wounds, Law had fixed a lot of bad wounds in his life – his knowledge and Devil Fruit ability working hand in hand to stich skin and bone and sinew together. This wasn’t a _bad_ wound. This was a _fatal_ wound, and he could almost see the life slipping from Kid’s body right before his eyes.

_No, no you can’t-_

He wasn’t breathing anymore and Law wanted to do something, to press his mouth against Kid’s and force his breath into him over and over until it _stuck_ , but he could see the devastation through the opened chest cavity, could see where most of his lungs had been and there was nothing left to make use of that oh-so vital oxygen anymore.

Law’s fingers pressed over an undamaged portion of his torso, trying to find something, anything to hold on to, one last scrape of hope, and yes, there it _was_ because Kid’s heart was _beating_. And yet, every beat came slower than the last, weaker, and all it really did was pump his blood right out of his body and all over Law’s hands.

As he stared down in bone-chilling realization, all he could see were his own red-stained fingers and the letters DEATH staring right back up at him in mocking irony.

This was all he was, in the end. He might try and reject it, ignore it, find ways to live and scrape himself off the ground at every failed attempt, but it didn’t matter. It always found him, him and those around him, those he cared for the most and never, never showed mercy.

He was _death_ and he brought death to everyone he ever loved. It was how it had always been, long before Doflamingo, and why had he been _stupid_ enough to ever think that now Doflamingo was gone it would be any _different_? This was his curse, his life, to witness the deaths of his loved ones, to be the one left behind, to know there was _nothing_ , there would never be _anything_ he could do.

There was nothing else to him. Nothing.

And if this was all there was, he thought he might be better off dead.

 _‘You will meet your maker today, about that you can be certain,’_ and of course it was _now_ , now in this moment of weakness that _his_ words came back, sharp and cruel and horrible, echoing through Law’s entire being. _‘Yet, if you are to meet your end... why not make it at least a little meaningful?’_

His heart skipped a beat.

The world around him fell into nothingness, sounds and images crawling to a stop as realization settled heavy and unmovable in his bones like a force of its own.

He took one breath, felt Kid’s heart stutter feebly one more time.

Before the air left his lungs again, Law’s mind was set, and the world crashed back around him.

“Room.”

He could barely hear in the distance, Bepo yelling for him, Shachi and Penguin’s voices rising high with his, but they held no meaning to Law. Nothing would, in less than a moment, but if he could _do_ this, if he could restore the life that was slipping away before him, he would do _anything_.

He felt the tug in his chest that always accompanied the use of his abilities, felt his awareness of everything in the newly-made circle sharpen to a point. And looked, searched deep into himself, for the knowledge that had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since he ate the fruit, of how this would work, of what he had to do.

He’d never done it before (understandable, since he was still alive), and there had never been a record of how it was done for the simple reason that no one who’d ever done it had lived to tell the tale. But Law had seemed to instinctively know there was something more to his abilities something beyond anything he’d ever done, and the day he stumbled on the information, on what that technique _was_ , he’d known he could do it in a heartbeat if he ever wished to.

He never thought he _would_ , though. Law was never the self-sacrificing type, never a hero. He didn’t find others’ existence so far above his own that he would lay himself at their feet. And the very idea of forfeiting his life for the sake of another’s immortality had seemed distasteful.

But now, here, bent over Kid’s prone form, everything telling him it was barely a matter of moments before the man was gone forever, he knew he had no other choice.

There was something inside of him, a torn and battered thing – maybe it was his sanity, or his heart, or his soul – held together by a thread. And if he let Kid die, if he stood above him now as his heart beat its last, he knew with a bone-deep certainty, that the thread would snap and he would shatter completely.

So he reached deep inside his own chest, the blood on his hands staining them with the red of Kid’s hair, and he locked his fingers around something small and hot and throbbing, around this thing that went beyond description, because there was nothing physical to it, this thing that kept him _alive_ , and he pulled.

The pain, one that had no physical ground but seemed to radiate into every cell of his body, had him bending in two over the man at his feet and his breaths turned erratic, short, powerless, like the very strength to suck the air in was slipping between his fingers like water, but through it all there was only one thing that mattered.

With shaking bloodstained fingers he gripped his life, his tether to this world, and he pressed it down, right in the middle of Kid’s destroyed chest. And he could feel, deep in his mind, the moment it slid into place.

The broken skin under his hands seemed to shift, recovery kicking in so fast that his blackening sight could catch every gruesome detail of the wound closing up, organs restoring and ribs snapping back into place under dermis that seemed to be growing out of thin air. Beside them something fell to the ground with the sound of metal meeting stone, and Law could just make out the bloodied and torn remnants of the port to Kid’s fake arm rolling loose and clattering to the ground. And where it had been just a moment ago, there was bone and muscle and flesh knitting itself together into a limb long lost.

Under his numbing fingers, Law felt Kid’s heart stop, one long excruciating second of complete stillness settling, and then,

_Ta-thump._

-x-x-x-x-x-

Air rushed into Kid’s lungs with a sharp stab of pain that shot through his entire body, almost like it was unfamiliar but craved, like after he’d take a long dive in the ocean and Killer wouldn’t drag him out fast enough. Only he wasn’t wet and there was the distinct lack of sea water to hack out of his lungs. Or, any memory of him being anywhere _near_ water, actually.

Only… Only the memory of pain. All consuming pain in his arm, his leg, his head, his _chest_ , and a thought filled with absolute certainty:

_I fucked up. I’m dead._

His eyes snapped open in a sudden realization that he _wasn’t_ , and his mind could barely wrap around this because…

Because he would have been fine with it. Sure, he never reached One Piece, but he did his goddamn best to and if he died on the way there, that would also be good, because he’d know he hadn’t lost. He’d always thought dying would be better than watching someone walk away with his prize, anyway.

And also, there had been Trafalgar, the fucking beautiful sight of him hovering over Kid seared in the back of his eyelids, and if that wasn’t the best damn last thing to see before he died, he didn’t know what _could_ be.

Only he wasn’t dead, and that didn’t make sense. The only thing he could think of was Trafalgar, but that was insane. He’d seen the man work before, he’d seen him operating time and time again, enough to know he was spectacularly good at it, but he couldn’t perform miracles. Not like this.

He felt something, a pressure against his chest, light weight rested there for a moment, before it seemed to wobble and Kid pushed himself up just in time to grab onto Law’s crumbling form before he collapsed right on top of him and-

And he was holding Law, _both_ arms wrapped around him, _both_ flesh and blood and bone arms and he must really have died because this was _impossible_ -

Then he heard it: sobbing, loud and obnoxious. He looked up in confusion to find Law’s bear wrapped around himself in a tight ball of shaking orange jumpsuit and the stupid-hat duo clutching at each other through their sobs. Right beside them stood Killer and Kid didn’t need to see his face to read the disbelieving shock written in every taut line of his body.

There was a suspicion that he _couldn’t_ \- he couldn’t _believe_ , he _refused_ to think about it even as Law rested against him completely limp, a _dead_ weight in Kid’s arms.

“What did-“

His voice choked as he realized there was no warmth of breath where Law’s mouth was pressed against naked skin, that there was no heartbeat he could feel other than his own, and he clawed desperately at the back of Law's shirt, pulled him closer to himself as if he could fix this, could make it any less real-

“What did you _do_?” The agonized howl tore through his throat as Law refused to answer and realization swept all coherent thought from Kid’s mind, exchanging it with bitter anger and desperate sorrow.

Against him, Law’s body lay, limp, unmoving, lifeless. Yet, in his death, he smiled.


End file.
